Page 129 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

CHAPTER

6

Life cycle thinking for sustainable

development in the building industry

Jinming Lei, Beijia Huang, Ying Huang
Department of environment and architecture, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology,
Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

6.1 Introduction

In various production activities, the construction and operation of buildings have an im-
portant impact on energy consumption and environmental damage (Birch, 2014). Research
shows that the energy consumption of building activities accounts for more than 50% of
the world’s total energy consumption, and around 40% of the total energy consumption in
both the United States and the European Union (Sun et al., 2017). Since the reform and open-
ing up 40years ago, China’s economy has developed rapidly and has become the second larg-
est in the world. With the rapid development of the economy, the proportion of the
construction industry in the national economy is getting higher. China’s building materials
consume more than 5 billion tons of clay, limestone, and sandstone resources each year, con-
suming 230 million tons of standard coal energy (Xie and Yan, 2015). The production and
transportation of building materials, the manufacture of building components, the construc-
tion, operation, and demolition of buildings, and other processes will bring many environ-
mental problems. At present, building life cycle assessment (LCA) has become a common
tool in the building sector to evaluate and contribute to sustainable building development
(Khasreen et al., 2009a).
Regarding the environmental impact assessment of buildings materials, multiple studies
have quantified energy consumption during the building production process and assessed
corresponding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Hong et al., 2014; Ng et al., 2013; Estokova
and Porhinc ´ǎk, 2012). Huang et al. (2015) and Hong et al. (2016a) used material flow analysis
(MFA) models to calculate material stock of urban infrastructure materials, and predict build-
ing material stock in China from 2010 to 2050 (Huang et al., 2015; Hong et al., 2016a).
Tanikawa et al. (2015) used 4D GIS technology to investigate and analyze the consumption

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Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment for Decision-Making Copyright # 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818355-7.00006-3